Copenhagen cuts 'would still give 3C rise'
Updated on 17 December 2009
As a deal at the Copenhagen summit hangs in the balance, a leaked UN document says the emissions cuts being negotiated would still not result in a twodegree cap on global warming. Julian Rush reports.
Environment correspondent Julian Rush said the document "addresses what is probably the elephant in the room in these negotiations".
He said: "There is a lot of ground to cover, and environment minister will be working through the night to try and draft a document for the world leaders to sign tomorrow.
"In the last hour there is new pressure being put upon them. This document has been leaked and it is an inside assessment by the United Nations secretariat of all the offers on the table here from the rich countries to cut their carbon emissions in the future.
"It adds them all up and asks where do we get.
"Now all the countries say we want to limit our temperature rise to two degrees. This is really bad news for them - it says that if you add up what's on the table at the moment you get three degrees rise in temperature which means far more worse climate change.
"Earlier in the day the meeting took a turn for the better because there were signs that the world leaders here, the big players here were beginning to do things to try and move things along."
Hillary Clinton, the US Secretary of State, today reversed a long-standing US position and put money on the table for developing countries in a move that is widely seen as an attempt to try and break the deadlock.
Delegates, including 130 world leaders, are meant to reach an agreement by tomorrow. With the arrival of world leaders in Copenhagen, the stakes in the climate poker game got higher.
Germany's Angela Merkel admitting she was not optimistic, but unwilling to give up hope. Only hours remain to agree a face-saving political declaration with enough substance in it to make it at least look as though their actions match their rhetoric.
The US has offered to contribute to a $100bn a year fund for the developing world, as long as countries like China are open about their emissions. China, for now, is not budging.
Jon Snow talked to Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who has been trying to help broker a deal since Tuesday.
He said he does not believes that success at the Copenhagen conference only depends on the major developing countries of China and India coming to some sort of compromise.
